The insidious creatures began their assault yesterday and caused the typical panic. Relief may not come for several days. Local authorities encourage everyone to remain indoors for safety.
Good night and good luck, people of Earth.
1) Suggest that any work of comic literature is not, in fact, the equal or superior to every other classic of world literature, up to and including Shakespeare. If you do, you’re being a tedious literature elitist, and missing the fact that Shakespeare is popular mainly for the fart jokes.
2) Suggest that anybody trying to keep certain not-really-for-kids comics out of the hands of 11-year-olds is anything but a censor-happy ogre out to destroy the intellectual culture of the nation.
As the game release calendar picks up steam for the mad rush to the holidays, I find myself with things to say. To that end, my review of the fantastic Batman: Arkham Asylum game is up at Needcoffee.
So I wrote a game review of Chair/Epic’s Shadow Complex for Needcoffee. Head on over and check it out, if that sort of thing is your bag, baby.
This is the inside of my head all the time.
The BBC reports a new database containing details on a quarter of a million soldiers from the Hundred Years’ War has gone live. Impossibly cool stuff.
Late Tuesday night, a man responsible for the joy of millions passed from the world. For the second time in just over a year, the gaming world lost a titan, an innovator, and a parent. Dave Arneson, co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons, died peacefully among his family and friends at the age of 61.
Along with Gygax, who preceded him both into the world and out of it, Arneson revolutionized games and gaming as a hobby. Most everyone I know has spent more hours chucking funny dice or playing computer games based on RPG concepts than they have engaged in any other leisure activity. I myself have played roleplaying games (tabletop and computer-driven) for more than 20 years, and hope to play for twice that yet. I’ve seen the hobby go from obscure niche geek endeavor to massive popularity (complete with cartoon!), back to social pariah status, and yet again into the mainstream, this time hopefully to stay for a while. I’m glad Dave got to see it too. I never had a chance to meet the man, as I did Gygax, but by all accounts he was unfailingly kind, friendly, and appreciative of the players that made gaming what it is today. I can’t speak for anybody but myself, but I owe Arneson and Gygax a greater debt than I can ever adequately express, much less repay. In a memorial thread on an RPG forum I frequent, I spotted the quote used for a title above, and can think of no better tribute to the legacy Arneson has left behind.
The kings are dead. Long live the kings.
Pro-tip: If you’re going to trash the new Watchmen downloadable game, it would behoove you not to look like a jackass by critiquing the voice-over actors as “…some guy who sounds like a teenage Christian Bale/Dark Knight fan” (Rorschach) and the “whiny kid doing Nite Owl’s voice,” given that both those roles in the game are voiced by the actors playing said characters in the major motion picture. Tool.
In your rush to maintain your “edgy” cred by trouncing the title (which has some obvious flaws from the short time I spent with the demo), you decided to see how many cool analogies you could make in criticizing it, and made yourself look like an idiot. Ten seconds on IMDB.com would’ve perhaps saved you the embarassment, and you could’ve stuck to more valid critiques (game length, price point, repetitiveness).
P.S.: Complaining that the game only gave you two characters to choose from, when it has been known since the game was announced that the game would only feature two characters? This also makes you look like a tool.
UPDATE: Apparently, I wasn’t the only one to find problems with the analysis, as the original has already been edited to soften the voice-acting critiques and acknowledge the actors were not, in fact “teenagers” or “whiny kids.”